


First Drawn From Darkness

by Zdenka



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Canon-Typical Content, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, background Ajax/Tecmessa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-24 06:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17699258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/pseuds/Zdenka
Summary: Teucer's memories of Ajax, on the eve of leaving Troy.





	First Drawn From Darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/gifts).



> Based primarily on the _Iliad_ and Greek tragedy, especially Sophocles's _Ajax_ and Euripides's _The Trojan Women_. Canon-typical content includes: captive women as war prizes (but no onscreen rape/noncon), reference to violent death of a child, suicide.

Before the Greek ships leave the shore of Troy, Teucer goes to visit Ajax’s tomb one last time.  He kneels to cut a lock of his hair and pours wine as a libation. It is still a bitter regret to him that, for all the times Ajax protected him, on that day Teucer didn’t come in time. No enemy could defeat Ajax’s strength; he lies here still undefeated by any hand but his own.

 He feels he should find some words that are worthy, something that does honor to Ajax and to this place. But no words come to him. Finally he says, “You guarded this shore for so many years. Stay here and guard it still. When they see your tomb, people will say, ‘This is the tomb of Ajax son of Telamon, greatest of the Greek warriors at Troy.’ And your name will never fade.” He stiffly levers himself to his feet. “As for your son Eurysaces, I will bring him safely to our father.”

The place isn’t far from here, where Teucer followed the sound of Tecmessa’s cry and found Ajax lying among the reeds, the sword once given by Hector pierced through his chest. It was the one time Teucer stood over Ajax’s body to protect him. Fury and fear blurred together; he defied the sons of Atreus, and would have fought the entire Greek army if need be. To protect Ajax’s wife and young child, to give his brother burial: if he couldn’t do that, better to perish there and let the sons of Atreus leave them both unburied together.

Standing by Ajax’s corpse, Agamemnon mocked Teucer—as he would not have dared while Ajax was alive—for speaking like his foreign mother. It wasn’t true. Ever since he was young, he shaped his speech to imitate Ajax or their father Telamon. If he was a foreigner, a barbarian, then he couldn’t follow Ajax to battle. He wouldn’t give anyone reason to say that he wasn’t worthy to be Ajax’s brother or to stand by his side.

Teucer cannot think of anything more to say. Ajax was never a man for many words, in any case. He was always a man of action. Teucer stands for a while in silence, while the reeds hiss in the wind. At last he turns and walks away.

Arrived back at the camp, Teucer looks once around the hut where he has spent so many years. He has made it comfortable enough with captured trophies, but it was never home. They have all been away from home for a long time.

After a moment, he takes down the shield hanging on the wall. It has been there since Ajax died, where Teucer can see it when he opens his eyes. It seemed in his heart that as long as that shield hung on his wall, the Trojans would never threaten the Greek encampment or burn their ships. Nonsense, of course. A spear is nothing without a strong arm to wield it, and even the shield of Ajax is no protection without the presence of Ajax himself. Teucer knew it was foolish to regard the shield itself as protection, but each time before going into battle he touched it like a talisman. He pressed his hand to it for a long moment before going into the darkness of the wooden horse, the trick that finally let the Greeks take Troy.

Teucer can barely lift the shield, made from seven layers of bull’s hide covered with bronze, though Ajax always swung it around with ease. He lacks the height, the sturdy build and broad shoulders of his brother, who was called a tower of strength and the bulwark of the Achaeans. Teucer hefts it onto his back and goes to find Tecmessa, his brother’s spear-won bride.

Tecmessa makes him welcome, offering him food and drink, but Teucer shakes his head. “Is Eurysaces here?”

Tecmessa calls the boy over. He grins cheerfully at Teucer. It’s hard to tell with a child so young, but he doesn’t seem to have inherited any tendency to brood. Teucer swings the shield from his back and sets it down, resting the rim on the ground. “Eurysaces, do you know what this is?”

“A shield!” Eurysaces says brightly. Of course the boy knows the word; growing up in an armed camp, he would have learned ‘spear’ and ‘shield’ and ‘armor’ almost before ‘mother’ and ‘father’.

Teucer holds the shield upright, his hands on the upper rim. “This was your father’s shield, Eurysaces. When he died, he wanted you to have it.”

Eurysaces considers this for a moment. “I want to hold it!” He puts his small hands on the rim of the shield, and pouts when Teucer doesn’t let go. “I want to hold it myself!”

Teucer lets go. The shield wavers in the boy’s grasp, and Teucer quickly steadies it from the side before it can topple over onto him. Eurysaces can barely see over the shield; of course it’s too heavy for him to hold. Will he have the strength to wield it someday, Teucer wonders? If he turns out to be on the slender side, perhaps he could be an archer like Teucer. That wouldn’t be so bad. For a moment Teucer lets himself imagine seeing the boy grow up into an image of his father, guiding his hands on the sword or bow.

He dismisses the image with a small shake of his head. When he returns to Salamis, Teucer will have to face his father’s judgement. Teucer has committed no crime, but he—the second son, the bastard—is alive when his brother is dead. Perhaps it is better not to think too far ahead.

Teucer gently lifts the shield out of the boy’s hands. “That’s enough for now,” he says. “I’ll see it stowed on one of the ships for you.” He will do it himself. Teucer will not entrust his brother’s shield to anyone else’s hands.

Tecmessa comes forward, resting her hands gently on her son’s shoulders from behind. “You have always treated us both well.” She meets his eyes with her clear gaze. “We are fortunate in your protection.”

“I made a promise to the dead,” Teucer says shortly. There should be no question; she doesn’t owe him thanks for it. The bronze shield is a heavy weight in his hands. “You don’t have to worry,” he adds a little awkwardly. “When we get to Salamis, I’ll tell my father how things are. I’ll bring you and the boy to him and the queen Eriboea. They will welcome their own son’s child.”

“And me?” Tecmessa murmurs, with doubt in her eyes. “How will they receive me, a Trojan captive?”

Teucer starts to speak, then stops. He can say he will speak for her, that he will defend her. But when Telamon’s fury bursts out against him, it will do no good for him to speak for anyone else. “Telamon has always treated my mother well. He raised me as his own son, though I wasn’t born from his wife. I do not think he will be harsh to you.”

Tecmessa’s expression grows resigned. “Whether he treats me well or ill,” she says, “this fate was in store for me from the time when I was made captive and allotted to Ajax as a prize of valor. My family is gone, and Troy has fallen. My son and I have no other refuge.” Her hands tighten on her son’s shoulders.

“No one will harm Eurysaces,” Teucer says with more certainty. “I will stand between him and danger until we reach Salamis, and then his grandfather will have charge of him.”

Tecmessa is silent for a moment. “I heard some of the sailors talking earlier,” she says carefully. “They said that the Greek kings in the assembly have condemned Astyanax son of Hector to death.”

Teucer hasn’t heard it, but he can no longer be surprised. “A cruel deed,” he says brusquely, “to kill a child.”

“You have heard nothing of this? It is said they mean to fling him from the walls of Troy.”

Teucer shakes his head. “If that’s what they’ve decided, I won’t be able to stop it. The sons of Atreus hold no love for me.”

Tecmessa hesitates. “I don’t ask you to stop it,” she says after a moment. “But will you find out at least whether they mean to grant him proper burial?”

Teucer wants to retort indignantly that of course they will, but honesty holds him back. “I will find out.”

She dips her head. “Thank you.”

Of all the people Teucer could meet as he goes through the camp, it would have to be Odysseus. Teucer turns away, hoping not to be seen, but Odysseus calls a greeting. Teucer stops reluctantly and greets him in return. “Hail, son of Laertes.”

“Are you looking for someone, son of peerless Telamon? Or are you seeking news?”

“Yes,” Telemon says reluctantly. “I heard that Hector’s son—”

“Cruel, but a necessity,” Odysseus says slowly. “His death has been carried out, as the sons of Atreus commanded.”

Teucer doesn’t want to hear how Odysseus will justify the death of a child. “And his burial—if there is anyone left at Troy to bury him?”

Odysseus nods sagely. “I understand why you wish to ask about it. After all, the boy is your kin.”

Teucer stiffens. “My kin? The boy belongs to the royal house of Troy. It has nothing to do with me.”

Odysseus smiles a little but doesn’t dispute the point. “The boy’s body has been returned to the old queen, Hecuba. She and the Trojan women who have not yet been taken to the ships will bury him. At Andromache’s request, young Pyrrhus gave them Hector’s famed shield to bury him with.”

Teucer gives a jerky nod. “Then I have nothing more to ask.”

He turns away. He cannot help picturing a child’s body, cradled in Hector’s bronze shield. He has seen that shield in battle often enough, flashing across the battlefield, and felt cold dread run through his veins at the sound of Hector’s war-cry. But Hector will never lift that shield again. Troy’s very walls will be pulled down to the ground. Perhaps he should feel victorious, but he only feels tired and a little sick.

He remembers, too, another child held in the cradle of a mighty shield.

“Come, brother,” Ajax said with his booming laugh. “It is time for you to meet my son.”

Teucer allowed Ajax to pull him along and ducked into the tent after him. Tecmessa, Ajax’s prize of war, was within; she cradled a small bundle in her arms, rocking it back and forth, while she sang a soft melody. The song was peaceful, strangely incongruous in a camp of war, but something about it warmed Teucer’s heart.

Ajax stepped forward toward Tecmessa. “Give me the boy for a moment.”

Teucer thought there was a flash of apprehension in her eyes. She silently handed him the child.

He was so tiny, Teucer marvelled. Seeing the infant held in Ajax’s great hands, Teucer felt a sense of wonder and a growing protectiveness. He swore to himself that he would protect this child, next after Ajax, and keep any harm from coming to him. “What name will you give him?”

Ajax laughed again. He unslung the shield from his back and placed it on the ground, then placed the baby in its hollow as in a cradle. “Eurysaces,” he said. “It means ‘broad shield.’ And let this shield be his heritage. One day he will carry it after me.”

Teucer could not help smiling, seeing the child wave his small arms and legs in that warlike cradle. “He’s a bit small for it, don’t you think?”

“He’ll grow,” Ajax said confidently. He scooped up the baby again and handed him back to Tecmessa, who took the child in silence and held him to her chest protectively. Her head was bowed.

“Lady,” Teucer said awkwardly. Tecmessa looked up in surprise. He continued, “The song you were singing just now—what was it?”

“Only a lullaby,” Tecmessa murmured. “In Troy, mothers and nurses often sing it to their children, from slave women to the palace of King Priam himself.” She hesitated. “Do you know it?”

Teucer gave a quick shrug of his shoulders. “I thought I had heard it before,” he said. “But I may have been mistaken.”

Tecmessa looked at him for a moment; he thought she was weighing him somehow. “Would you like to hold the child?” she asked tentatively.

Teucer began to demur, but Ajax pushed him forward. “Go on,” Ajax said. “You won’t break him.”

Before he quite knew how it happened, Teucer was looking down at the child in his arms. “Hail, son of my brother,” he said seriously. Eurysaces blinked at him. In spite of Ajax’s words, the child seemed very fragile. Teucer handed him back to Tecmessa with a sense of relief.

Teucer and Ajax left the tent together. “She pleases me well enough,” Ajax said carelessly. “And now she has given me a son. I’ll bring her back to Salamis with me after we sack Troy.”

Now Troy has been vanquished, and the boy still thrives, but Ajax isn’t here to see it. It’s hard not to blame Odysseus for that.

Odysseus inclines his head gravely, as if he can guess what Teucer is thinking. “I hold no grudge against your brother,” he says. “And I hope that he too has forgiven me, among the dead.”

 _He will not forgive you,_ Teucer thinks. _Not even in the house of Hades._ Aloud he says only, “I desire no quarrel with you. The past is past.” It’s as gracious as he can manage. He turns away.

Odysseus’s tent is in the middle, almost the exact center of the line. He always did like to be in the middle of everything, whether it was properly his business or not. Teucer doesn’t mind the walk back to his own camp; it gives his temper time to cool.

Ajax’s encampment is at one end. In the battle line too, the most dangerous place is on the end, where no one else’s shield or spear protects your unguarded side. The Greek ships are stretched along the shore in a long line. Trusting in his strength, Ajax didn’t hesitate to claim one end, defending one flank of the Greek encampment. (It was Achilles who claimed the other.)

Ajax has always preferred to rely on himself. Teucer remembers a hot and dusty day on the plains before Troy; the two armies, Greek and Trojan, lined up facing each other. They fought for hours, with neither side able to gain the advantage.

“Stand firm now,” a voice called from behind them. Teucer recognized the voice of Alastor, one of their companions from Salamis. “Go forward boldly, and strike the Trojans! I think they will soon give ground.” A hand touched his shoulder, and Teucer felt his exhaustion fade away. He felt as fresh and eager as if he’d just risen from a full night’s rest, his heart filled with confidence.

Teucer turned, and looked into the eyes of someone who was not Alastor. Bright grey eyes shone from beneath the helmet, their glance clear and deadly as sunlight flashing from a spear-point. On the breastplate, the image of a woman’s face was fixed in a silent scream, surrounded by coils of snaky hair that shifted and twisted before his eyes.

Teucer swallowed. He bowed his head respectfully, and looked at Ajax to see if he had seen it also.

Ajax’s eyes were still fixed on the enemy. “Goddess, go the other Greeks,” he said brusquely. “The line will never falter here, where Ajax is.”

Teucer saw her eyes narrow. She turned away from them and vanished between one breath and the next. But it was true, Teucer thought loyally, fighting off unease. If anyone could hold his ground without the gods’ help, surely it was Ajax.

Perhaps if Ajax had taken more care to honor the gods, they wouldn’t have afflicted him with the madness that darkened his spirit. But Teucer can’t truly blame him. He too looked to Ajax, a nearer and more trusty protector than the gods on Mount Olympus. In his eyes, Ajax always seemed like an unconquerable tower, his shield as sure a protection as the aegis of Athena. How many times did Teucer take refuge behind that shield? How often did the two of them go into battle together, Teucer stepping out to shoot deadly arrows at the Trojans, then ducking back behind Ajax’s shield? The two of them relying on each other, trusting each other. That day they stood on the wall together to defend the ships against Hector’s fierce onslaught. Teucer shot again and again at Hector, but the swift shafts were turned aside by Hector’s shield. (Hector’s shield, that now cradles Hector’s son in the cold earth.)

Hector hurled a huge rock in return, that knocked Teucer to the ground and broke his bowstring. He lay there with the breath knocked out of him, his cheek against the ground; dizzy, half-unconscious, but not afraid, because Ajax’s shield was over him, protecting him until his companions could reach him and carry him to safety.

Teucer has reached his own camp now. He sighs and rests a hand against one of the black ships. Why should he be troubled by Odysseus’s words, that he is kin to the royal house of Troy? It’s not the first time he’s heard something like that, and he’s surely immune to the taunts by now. It stung more when he was younger, less sure of his place.

There was a group of boys playing together on a beach at Salamis, rather than this beach at Troy. He doesn’t remember exactly what set it off; boys, like grown warriors, can quarrel for any reason or none once their pride is injured.

Somehow, they decided that Teucer couldn’t join them. One of the boys pointed at Teucer. “You’re a Trojan! Herakles fought the Trojans, and that means we have to fight you.”

“I am not!” Teucer protested.

“You are! You don’t even speak right, you talk like a barbarian.”

“No, I don’t,” he insisted.

A hard shove from one of the boys made Teucer stumble. He clenched his fists, but before he could strike, Ajax’s protective shadow was over him. “What are you doing?”

They looked at each other and then at the ground. “We want to play Herakles at Troy,” one of them muttered.

“Then I’ll be Herakles,” Ajax said. No one looked as if they wanted to dispute the honor with him. “And Teucer can be Telamon.” He slung his arm around Teucer’s shoulders. “My father was Herakles’s friend back then. He helped Herakles fight the Trojans after the Trojan king lied to him, and Herakles gave him a Trojan princess as a prize for his valor.”

“If he’s Telamon, then who are the Trojans?”

Ajax shrugged. “Whoever wants to fight me.”

“But you’re stronger than all of us,” the boy muttered. “It’s not fair.”

“Fine,” Ajax said. “The rest of you can be the Trojans, and I’ll fight you with just Teucer. Get some sticks, we’ll use them for spears.”

In the end, they played at rescuing the princess from the sea monster, and then Herakles’s quarrel with the Trojan king Laomedon. The boy playing Laomedon tried to justify himself in his best rhetoric learned from their tutor. Teucer thought his words sounded well, considering the speech was improvised.

But Ajax had never had much patience for long speeches. He turned to Teucer and grinned at him. “Help me sack Troy!”

“Yes!” Teucer said at once. He gripped his “spear” more tightly in his hand and ran forward, at Ajax’s side.

 _Help me sack Troy . . ._ Teucer gives a choked laugh. The Greeks won the victory, but they’ve been here for ten years. His memories of Salamis, of his parents, have begun to fade. Will Salamis truly be home, without his brother?

He looks out to sea. The sun is setting, painting the waves in red and gold. What if Telamon does exile him, he thinks defiantly. The sea touches other shores, other lands besides Salamis. And he will not go forth alone, like a beggar. His name is well-known. His companions here, the spearmen and sailors who Ajax led from Salamis—they have fought beside Teucer for years now, and since Ajax’s death they have followed him. He thinks some of them would go with him, even into exile.

The ships are ready; the sailors have examined them carefully and repaired any damage. They are still stout and whole, these ships that Ajax defended, that Hector failed to burn. For one more night, their keels will rest on the beach at Troy. Tomorrow they will set sail again on the vast sea.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a line in Sophocles's _Ajax_ : "All things the long and countless years first draw from darkness, then bury from light." (translated by Richard Claverhouse Jebb)
> 
> Teucer and Ajax were half-brothers. Teucer's mother was the Trojan princess Hesione, sister of Priam. She was given as a war prize to Teucer's father Telamon when Herakles sacked Troy, some time before the Trojan War in the Iliad. That makes Teucer a cousin of Hector by blood, and a close relation to many of the people he's fighting against. It isn’t really gone into in the sources I’ve read, except when Agamemnon mocks Teucer for his “barbarian” origins in Sophocles’s _Ajax_ , but I thought it was interesting.
> 
> Teucer and Eurysaces: In some versions of the myth, Teucer tried to fight Eurysaces for the rule of Salamis after Telamon’s death. I’ve followed the version in _Ajax_ where Ajax says that he doesn’t fear anything bad happening to his son Eurysaces after his death: “so trusty is the warder whom I will leave to guard you, even Teucer, who will not falter in his care for you.” And Teucer proves worthy of his trust.
> 
> The death of Hector’s son Astyanax: I’ve followed the version in _The Trojan Women_ by Euripides.
> 
> Odysseus and Ajax: In the _Odyssey_ Book XI, Odysseus meets the shade of Ajax in the underworld, but Ajax is still angry and won't talk to him.
> 
> Tomorrow they will set sail again on the vast sea. - Slightly adapted from the last line of Horace odes I.7. In this poem, Teucer, who has been exiled from Salamis by his father, encourages his companions and tells them not to despair. An English translation of the poem can be found [here](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hor.+Od.+1.7&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0025).


End file.
